


nothing in his life became him like the leaving it

by pawn_vs_player



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mythology References, Worldbuilding, i do not write OCs x canon characters, there are OCs but only for lore purposes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: Miles had wondered, of course he had. Everyone does. But he hadn't been ready to find out.(In a world where the dead aren't gone, only transformed, Miles struggles with family, heroism, and what gets left behind.)





	nothing in his life became him like the leaving it

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from Macbeth.  
> i'm currently writing another fic with this same premise - people who die become mythological creatures and attach themselves either to the people they loved in life or to the (still-living) person responsible for their death - but the two are not connected otherwise. i just really love this AU and wanted to play with it in more than one fandom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from _The River of Winged Dreams_ by Aberjhani.

Everyone wonders about it, you know? It's one of those things that just pops into your head when you don't have anything else to think about. It's like any other existential question: usually unwelcome, annoyingly persistent, and relentlessly present. 

_What will I become when I die?_

Miles thinks about it when his dad comes home hours later than he's supposed to, when his mother works back-to-back shifts, when his uncle is on one of his "short" trips that run a few days longer than he said it would. He thinks about it when he's crossing the street and a car stops uncomfortably close to him. He thinks about it when he's putting up a mural, following on the steps of  _I wonder if this will still be here after I die._

He doesn't think as much about what his family will look like. His own death is easier to contemplate. He can't think about a world where his mom or dad is still here, but not quite his mom or dad anymore.

Because people change when they die. Not just physically, but mentally too. No one talks about it, but it's the truth. Miles knows. He's seen it.

-

He was young when his grandpa died; old enough to understand death and the afterlife, but too young to cross the street by himself. His father hadn't cried, because Grandpa wasn't  _gone_ , just dead. Miles was held in his mother's lap while his dad did the rites, laying the body out on the wooden floor so it could undergo the final transformation without material interference. Bare dirt was best, Mama explained softly as Dad rustled around in the other room, but floorboards worked well enough. The body could wear the clothes it had died in, but nothing else. There had to be a clear pathway for the spirit to travel and an anchor for the spirit to lock onto. Otherwise, the spirit would depart for the Beyond, and the body wouldn't change to fit the spirit's true shape. It would just be an empty body.

His dad's mom had been dead long before Miles was born. Dad called her a  _jengu_ ; Miles thought she looked like a mermaid, except that she swam around in the air around Uncle Aaron's head and shoulders. She'd chosen Uncle Aaron as her anchor, so Miles didn't see her very often. Miles called her Grandma because his dad wanted him to: only in the past few years had he actually understood that the  _jengu_ was really his grandmother. The spirits weren't something one was born knowing; it was something one had to learn.

Miles would miss talking to his grandpa, but his grandpa wouldn't be _gone_ , so death couldn't be so bad.

His dad had come into the room then, interrupting Mama's quiet explanations. He looked tired and sad. Miles didn't entirely understand that, either, because Mama had just  _said_ that Grandpa wasn't really gone, but he didn't say anything. Dad usually liked to be left alone when he was sad.

They waited, then. Spirits couldn't come back if someone was watching, Mama told him, but Dad shook his head. They can, but it's more respectful to let them change alone.

Miles thought that sounded kind of scary, the changing alone. Having your whole body turn into something else, something you couldn't control, something that supposedly showed your true self... Miles shivered a little. He didn't want to die, not if that would be the result. He liked his privacy.

The closed door to Grandpa's room creaked. Light shone in the crack underneath it.

"He's changing," Dad said. He sounded relieved. Miles wriggled out of Mama's arms so he could walk across the room and give his dad a hug. Dad didn't look at him, but he ruffled Miles's hair and tugged him closer to his body, so Miles knew he'd done the right thing.

The light grew and grew, until all of a sudden it stopped. "Do you think," Mama began, and stopped. Before Miles could ask what she was going to say, light bloomed in front of them, gradually taking a shape. It sort of reminded Miles of Grandma, because it had a long scaly tail, but the resemblance stopped there. Grandma had a human torso like a mermaid; this creature had a fish's head, but with a little trailing fin that looked sort of like a beard on its chin (or what would have been its chin on a human head, anyway). A thin glowing thread extended from its chest to Dad's.

"A _nyami-nyami_ ," Miles's dad said quietly. "That fits."

"He picked you," Miles's mom said, equally quiet. "Maybe they talked about it before she passed."

Dad snorted. He didn't sound convinced. "Maybe."

The creature - a  _nyami-nyami_  - made a chirping sort of noise and nudged at Miles's dad's chest with its head. Miles's dad blinked. 

Miles recognized the look on the _nyami-nyami's_ face. It was a little different, because the face was different, but it was the same face Miles's grandpa made when he was telling Dad something Dad didn't want to hear.

"Grandpa!" Miles exclaimed. The _nyami-nyami_  turned to Miles, made what was probably his version of a smile, and came over to wrap Miles in what was definitely a hug. It was different, but not bad. It was still a Grandpa hug.

As the days went on, Miles began to understand that while his grandpa was still there, he wasn't the same. He went quiet and withdrawn at weird times. He had a hard time dealing with the pollution in the rivers, and he hissed when they had fish for dinner. He got frustrated and then sad when he tried to talk to Miles or Mama and couldn't.

He also got really angry with Dad because Dad wouldn't visit Uncle Aaron, and Grandma was with Uncle Aaron. Before Grandpa died, he could visit Uncle Aaron and Grandma whenever he wanted. But he was dead now, and he was tied to Dad, and Dad didn't want to see Uncle Aaron. So Grandpa couldn't see Uncle Aaron or Grandma.

Miles offered a few times to take Grandpa over to Uncle Aaron's apartment. After the third time, Mama drew him aside and explained that spirits could only go so far from their anchoring people, and that they couldn't visit people their anchors didn't like.

"Your father loves your uncle Aaron, _mijo_ ," Mama said gently, stroking Miles' hair. "But he doesn't like him very much. You're a very sweet boy for offering to take your grandpa over there, but you can't, and that makes your grandpa feel worse."

"I won't do it again," Miles promised. "I wish Dad would let Grandpa see Grandma."

Mama sighed. "Me too, _mijo_ , me too."

-

Mama doesn't have any spirits. She has two sisters, one of which has a daughter of her own. When  _abuelo_ died, he latched onto Miles's cousin Victoria. His  _abuela_ is still alive, bur she lives in Puerto Rico, and Miles doesn't see her very much.

"I don't mind it, _mijo_ ," Mama tells him when he asks. "It seems... heavy, having one. I wouldn't be upset to get one, but I don't hope for one, either."

Miles thinks his mom is the smartest person in the world. He knows his dad had wanted one ever since Grandma died - wanted a parent to keep him company the way Grandma kept Uncle Aaron company. But having Grandpa as a spirit doesn't seem to be what Miles's dad expected, or wanted. Miles feels bad for both of them. His mom was smart enough to avoid all that.

She doesn't phrase it like advice, but Miles hears what she doesn't say. "That's smart," he says, and takes her words to heart.

-

Some of Miles's friends have a spirit or two. Lola in the brownstone across the street has a blue-scaled naga that sometimes wraps its tail around her shoulders like a scarf and perches its torso on top of Lola's head. Sam from basketball practice is followed by a pair of tiny pixies with sharp teeth and iridescent wings. A dark-furred three-headed dog curls up around Penny's backpack while she and Miles talk about the merits of one marker brand or another. 

It's rare among children, but it happens. Usually it's an older sibling or a parent, gone too soon. Sometimes it's a grandparent. Occasionally it's a close friend or, among teenagers, a romantic interest.

Sam doesn't talk about his pixies, but everyone knows about the car accident. The two years he lived in various neighborhoods in the Bronx before the Clennans took him in aren't exactly a secret, either.

Lola doesn't talk much in general, but Miles has been to her apartment. He's seen the locked room with the faded photo taped to the door, the sadness in her mother's eyes and the bottles stacked in her father's study. Besides, the naga has Lola's dark eyes and tightly-wound curls. 

Penny doesn't talk about the details, but she doesn't lie when people ask. Her mother was from Crete, the youngest of a set of triplets, and died when Penny was a toddler. She hadn't been a great mother, from what Penny's been told - drank too much, left town sometimes and left Penny with her father, couldn't handle Penny's crying - but she had attached herself to Penny anyways.

Miles sees the looks they get sometimes, pity and morbid curiosity. He knows they see the looks too. Penny ignores them. Sam scowls. Lola stares them down, silently daring them to ask.

Miles is so grateful that he doesn't have spirits.

-

In America, where just about everything started somewhere else, most people just call them spirit-creatures. Of course, that's the American English term for them, and "most" really means non-religious white people, for the most part anyway.

The Christian term is  _exspiranantia,_ a combination of the Latin for "ghost" and "echo". Lola calls her naga a _geyst_ and laughs at Miles's absolute inability to properly pronounce Yiddish. According to Miles's history teacher, spirit-creatures are called _shakal alaishbah_ in Arabic. 

Other people, usually immigrant families or descendants of slaves - Miles's family - use the name from their cultural background.

Miles's mom is Puerto Rican. Even though her family's background is mostly native Taino, her side of the family uses the common Spanish term:  _criatura alma_. Miles's dad is African-American, native Cameroonian from Miles's grandmother and descendant of slaves through Miles's grandfather. His dad says spirit-creature, because in his mind the  _American_ is more important than the  _African_.

Uncle Aaron disagrees with Miles's dad on a lot of things. He calls Miles's grandma a _reste d'ame_ , and tells Miles that he learned it from the woman herself. He tells Miles that his grandmother, Aaron's mother, never forgot that she was not American by birth. She told her sons about Cameroon, spoke in her native French and made them learn it. She told them to remember that there is more to their history than slavery and marches through the South.

Miles calls them spirit-creatures, mostly. His dad gets this awful pinched look on his face when he says _reste d'ame_. Sometimes Miles will say  _criaturas almas_ when he's talking to his mom or when he's angry with his dad, because his dad can't call him out for using Mama's language.

-

Uncle Aaron takes Miles to a hidden nook of the subway system. It's almost as big as Miles's dorm room, but the walls are plain concrete and the only other person to know this space exists is Uncle Aaron, who understands.

Miles pulls the paint out of his bag with a grin on his face. Grandma coils her lower half around Uncle Aaron's shoulders, nodding toward the far wall. "She says start with the pink," Uncle Aaron says. Miles doesn't ask, too eager to get started.

(He'll regret not asking later.)

-

Spider-Man is followed by three spirit-creatures, two men and a woman.

The woman, whoever she was in life, is a banshee in death. She looks like most other banshees Miles has seen (mostly in pictures, because he doesn't know many Irish people with dead relatives and Sam has pixies anyway): long hair somewhere between blonde and red, eyes shining red through a sheer veil, dressed in a hooded gray cloak and green dress. She is absolutely silent in every clip Miles has ever seen of Spider-Man fighting, but sometimes, when the hero is on the verge of defeat, she dashes at his opponent and rakes her fingernails, grown out nearly to claws, across their eyes.

One of the men is a  _domovoi_ , according to Wikipedia. He's small and wizened, a little old man with bright eyes and a white beard. Miles has no idea how old the man was when he died, if he was Spider-Man's grandfather or what, but he sort of feels like the  _domovoi_ looks older than he was in life. He participates in most of Spider-Man's fights, hitting villains with his small fists and making shrill noises when Spider-Man takes a bad hit. There are pictures and the occasional video of Spider-Man swinging around the city with his  _domovoi_ clinging to his shoulders, his mouth drawn into a wide smile, as the banshee floats along behind them.

The third spirit-creature has no need of flight or riding on Spider-Man's shoulders. New York is lucky that most spirit-creatures choose when to be solid, because Spider-Man's third follower is  _big_ , the size of your average tree. Miles has seen videos of the spirit-creature shrinking and growing, but most of the time the tree-man is around twenty-five feet tall. There are pinecones in his greenish-white hair and his beard is as long as Miles is tall. He usually stays out of Spider-Man's fights, other than allowing Spider-Man to use him as a foothold or sticking-point for webs, unless Spider-Man is up against the Green Goblin. Then he adds a few feet to his height and puts in a few of his own punches. Google isn't totally sure what this third spirit-creature is, but one of Miles's neighbors calls him a  _leszy_ , a forest spirit from Slavic mythology.

-

Kingpin's massive fists come down onto Spider-Man's chest. The sounds of cracking concrete and splintering bone is buried by the ear-splitting  _wail_ Spider-Man's banshee lets out. 

Miles covers his ears. Behind him, the scream goes on and on and on - 

and then it stops.

Miles is shaking. Something, a piece of debris, falls loose from the crumbled walls around him. Kingpin sets the weird purple mechanical guy after him,  _Prowler_ Miles thinks he heard. 

Miles runs, USB clutched in his fist.

-

Lying in his bed that night, his parents' voices muffled through the walls, Miles thinks about Spider-Man - Peter Parker. He was twenty-six years old. His parents were long dead and his uncle had died too. Two men and a woman.

Miles thinks about himself, Puerto Rican and African and African-American. Miles stares at the ceiling, heartbeat loud in his ears, a scream of his own trapped behind his teeth, and wonders which of his parents he'll take after when he dies.

-

Miles tugs at the hem of his too-small Spider-Man costume. Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man's wife, stands on the stage. She's making a speech, giving a eulogy really, but somehow Miles still feels like she's speaking to him specifically. 

The USB digs into his palm. "I can be Spider-Man," he whispers to himself.

For the first time, he believes it. 

 


End file.
